


Comfort

by Laeviss



Category: World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft - Various Authors
Genre: 30 Day OTP Porn Challenge, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 10:38:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5245196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laeviss/pseuds/Laeviss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While spending the night with Varian on Draenor, Garrosh is shaken awake by a nightmare. Written for the NSFW Prompt Challenge prompt 15: Sweet and Passionate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfort

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my wonderful Varian RPer, AlacritiousEidolon. :)

He used to have this dream a lot.

He would be standing on a road somewhere, emptiness stretching out before him, extending on all sides. And he would be waiting. His stomach would clench into knots and he’d stand there, hands balled into fists at his sides, eyes desperately scanning the horizon. The wind would feel warm, but he’d shudder, regardless. There was no comfort to be had on an empty plain. No matter how bright the day felt around him, he would plunge into shadow, alone, cold, out on a wind-swept road.

The dream took many forms throughout his life. Back in Garadar, he often dreamed he was standing on the road leading east, unable to turn around and run back to its gates. Frozen in place, he would watch, pray, needing to believe his father would come back to him. When he thought it through during his waking hours, he was sure this was how the dream began.

But it wasn’t the only emanation he had come to know. Sometimes the swaying grass would fade into sands, red beneath the sun, and instead of the plains there’d be in a valley. He was standing at the Dranosh’ar Blockade but he couldn’t glance back at the city or feel his Kor’kron guards at his side. All he could do was stare into the canyon, and wait for Thrall, for Dranosh, for anyone who would come and pull him from this hell. The loneliness would cling like a cloak on his shoulders, and his hands would fall limp beside his thighs, given away to hopelessness.

Lately there was another version of the dream, less cold, but fraught with anxiety from start to finish. From the road leading up to the cave he and Varian Wrynn had taken to meeting, he’d gaze out over the valley, across Nagrand’s windswept plains and jutting rocks. He wasn’t completely alone— occasionally a windroc would sweep overhead or a pack of riders would pass in the distance— but the sinking feeling in his chest was just as heavy. Just as forlorn.

Maybe it was the realness of the dream and the fears, haunting his waking hours as well as those he passed sleeping, that made the feeling all the more poignant. It always felt like an ordinary meeting. He wasn’t supposed to be deserted; Wrynn was supposed to _be there_ , but he never came. And Garrosh would growl, and sink down into a slump against the sand, knowing very well why it had happened and realizing he had no one to blame but himself. That made it even worse. The wind would whip at his cheeks and his eyes, and he would squeeze them closed, yielding to desperation.

It happened that night, while he was sleeping. With eyes staring, scanning the horizon, the road, the rocks and steps that led up to the cave, he couldn’t find him. The blood drained from his cheeks, and he looked forward, then back, legs locked in place in the center of the path. The cave behind him loomed like a maw. The road in front of him whistled and whispered all the things that he had done, how much he deserved this. And he gave in to it. With a cry, he let the darkness, the hopelessness, wash over him, truly believing there wasn’t a person alive, let alone Varian Wrynn, who wanted him to see his face.

How could they, after what he had become? How could he have ever believed he wanted anything to do with him, after Theramore, Anduin, the trial and all the hatred he had spewed when the Old God flooded his mind? How could anything but horror await him now?

With a groan, he curled in on himself. His hand clutched for the fur draped across his chest. Fingers shaking, he balled up the fabric and tried to hide his face, needing the warmth as a shiver wracked his body. There was no reason to feel cold, but he did. It was as if he had plunged into churning depths of the sea at Garrosh’s Landing, robbed in an instant of all the hopes and confidence that had, in reality, faded with time after leaving Northrend. He felt only ice, and couldn’t stop shaking. His lips formed a cry he would never, in his waking hours, let anyone hear:

“Don’t leave me.”

But he wasn’t alone. Because Varian _had_ come to the cave that night, no matter how many lies his dreams had told, and was now laying by his side, reaching for him, trying to nudge him awake. It took a few touches for it to register, however, and when it finally did, Garrosh had already cried out again, voice low with dread, unabashed and unhindered:

“Varian.”

“Garrosh? What’s going on?”

With that, he finally came to. Varian’s hand was splayed out across his shoulder, fingers clenching then releasing, as if they weren’t sure what kind of pressure was appropriate. It was always like this with them: Close enough to kiss and fuck and send message after message requesting another meeting, but still hesitant when it came to speaking. Shy, even, though Garrosh struggled to see it that way.

Clenching his jaw, he tried to sit up, but found his arms shaky with the remnants of his nightmare. Nails scratched against the bedmat beneath them, and he failed to rise; his stomach gave another unbidden clench. “Hm?” He grunted, hoping to save face, but at this point, with how stunned he felt and the way his body quivered, there was no point. With a single shake of his head, he eased back down and turned away. When his face met the cold air on the other side of the bed, he realized his cheeks were wet.

Great. How humiliating. He had _never_ wanted Varian to see him like this.

But the human seemed to take it in stride. The lantern he had lit— to check on _him_ , he assumed, in another wave of shame— was quickly extinguished, and when Varian’s hand returned to his back it wasn’t nearly as tentative as before. He stroked along his spine, up the swirl of his tattoo and across a particularly large gash of a scar that had striped him since Orgrimmar. It finally came to rest on his shoulder. They lay in silence for a moment, Garrosh swallowing and trying to still his breathing, Varian tracing along the line of his collarbone with his thumb. Both caught in a silence that was neither pained nor relaxed. It was easier this way, for both of them.

It was Garrosh, however, who finally broke it. His need to make some kind of excuse for himself won out, and he mumbled, almost inaudibly, “I have nightmares sometimes.” Even the simple phrase formed strained on his lips, and by the end, his voice as fallen to a rumble.

“We all have nightmares.” It wasn’t snapped or sarcastic as it might have once been, back when they bantered and fought and tried to get the best of one another at every turn. The sport in that had lost its shine after the Siege. They both knew there was no use playing a game like that when it was clear who was the loser. Instead it came as a whisper, reassuring, with a gentle squeeze of his shoulder following on its heels. Garrosh felt himself starting to unwind, but still couldn’t turn back and look.

“I’ve had it since I was a child. It had nothing to do with you.”

He wasn’t sure why he felt the need to say it, and when he heard it hanging in the air beside him, he wished he could snatch it back. But Varian didn’t seem to mind. He lapsed into silence, but gave his shoulder another grasp.

“It was wrong of Thrall to leave you,” Varian’s voice rose again, fully formed this time, not quite as hesitant as it had been before. Garrosh swallowed, and waited, not wanting to argue, but also unwilling to admit that any of the blame could be shared. He had always struggled to understand guilt: it was either not his fault, or only his fault, and nothing in between. Like the boy on the road waiting, he was left alone, with only his own shoulders to bear the brunt of his curse.

But Varian seemed unwilling to see things his way; this wasn’t the first time he had tried to point out Thrall’s error, or claim that leaders under him should have been more supportive. Garrosh secretly worried this was Varian trying to justify it to himself rather than to help him. And it was that fear, unfortunately, that drew a growl from his throat:

“You say that, but I was the one who fell to the Sha. It was on my hands. On my honor. How can I ever come back from that?”

Silence flooded the air between them, and the words, half-roared, half-cried, lingered far too long in the air. He could feel the ice seeping in again, a shiver starting in the base of his chest to claw and clamber  up his spine. And the worst part was, he knew Varian could feel it, too. Squeezing closed his eyes, he flinched, and fought the urge to jerk away. If not for the fear of loneliness still sinking like a weight in his stomach, he probably would have.

They had never been great with words: with real words, at least, meaningful ones traded in honest conversation. And now, more than ever, Garrosh’s tongue felt heavy with the weight of his own reluctance. But he refused to let it become an awkward pause. He couldn’t bear the tension: not now, not when he felt trapped in the realness of his nightmare and the darkness of the air closing in on him. He sought out Varian’s hand beneath the furs, and laced their fingers together.

Soon Varian’s lips were on his neck, kissing a line from his earlobe to the slope of his shoulder. His cheek scratched against his skin, but it was a pleasant scratch: gentle, and familiar. Lips chapped by the wind and dust of the road sucked at the nape of his neck, and he squeezed his hand, sighing, the weight between his shoulders starting to unwind. Seeming to feel the shift in his posture, Varian slid forward. His hips squared against him.

The absence of words made it easier to follow his meaning. Every touch said far more than any conversation they could have had— touch, unlike words, wasn’t plagued by the same decorum and expectations that kept them snapping and struggling against one another whenever they tried to speak. Now they were able to unwind.

Varian’s hair drifted forward across his arm; it brushed and tickled, and he couldn’t help but let out the breath he had been holding. Just being close with him like this...was good. The warmth was enough to relax him. His shivers stilled, and without hesitation or excuse, he leaned back into his touch. His hips rolled forward against him, driven not by lust but by a need for closeness they both understood. And he nodded, eyes closed, and turned his head back to seek a kiss.

Nuzzling the human’s cheek, he felt his fingers slide out of his grasp to reach into the space between them. Luckily the bottle of oil they had used earlier was well within reach, and in the silence, Garrosh could hear the lid popping open and Varian sliding his hand against his skin. It took a few moments; they weren’t exactly worked up, and had already finished once that evening, but soon Varian’s lips had returned to his neck and he felt the head of his cock sliding against his entrance.

He rested against him. The cock stroked and massaged him— rubbed against skin already raw and stretched from their previous fucking— before sinking in. But this time, there was no thrust or needy keen. Just the low exhale of Varian entering his body and staying there, draping a leg over his thigh and taking in the closeness.

They had had enough fucks, fingers digging into each other’s skin and Varian’s hips pounding hard against him, to know the shape and feel of each other’s bodies. But this stillness, this warmth...was new. Making no move to do anything but gently rock, Varian held him. His hand slid from his shoulder to his back, then around his waist, then up to trace the curve of his chest. Every gesture was careful and measured. Every breath was warm against the side of his neck. A sigh escaped his lips, and he rolled back to deepen the contact. He didn’t even care when Varian leaned forward to kiss his sticky cheek.

“Does that feel okay?” Varian finally murmured, though it felt more like a sigh than a whisper. Garrosh nodded, and clutched at the furs: not in horror, this time, but in enjoyment, the need to close his fingers around _something_ as he felt his cock starting to twitch. “Good.” Varian’s next word was enough to make him moan, and he did, unabashedly. He had nothing to hide right now.

The human’s hand moved from his chest to his abdomen, seeming to sense enough in the change of his posture to know where he wanted his fingers. In only a few moments, his palm was around his cock, stroking it to full hardness, rubbing a circle around the head before sliding down over the row of piercings. Garrosh’s breath hitched; he pressed back onto his cock and let his hips roll to meet him. From the hand rubbing his foreskin over his head to the shaft buried inside, he felt close. Safe. The loneliness of the path outside was far from his mind.

They went on like that for what could have been minutes or hours. It was hard to judge the time when Varian’s thrusts were so measured and careful, rolling forward to press against his inner wall and then withdrawing, just enough that his return drew a sigh from Garrosh’s lips. The tension built beneath his shaft, drawn away from his shoulders and neck and down into a ball of coiling heat to be drawn out by Varian’s fist. With another groan, he turned his head, and their mouths pressed together. There was something about the kiss— both foreign in its gentleness, and familiar in its taste— that made him shudder, and he wanted nothing more than to unwind and stay in his arms like this.

Far from the empty road. Far from the town or cave looming behind him with its memories and ghosts of a past that should have never happened. The only one at his back was Varian: warm, careful, far more caring than Garrosh could have ever expected or dreamed. A single memory to hold him, not haunt him, when he drifted off to sleep.


End file.
